[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the photographer and (2) link your document to this URL.]

An interesting combination of Georgian proportion and Victorian design faces the late Victorian/early Edwardian colossus of City Hall. Designed by Lanyon, Lynn, Lanyon in a splendid yellow-grey brick, the building was originally a mere warehouse for the firm of Moore and Weinberg when completed in 1864. The present name recalls the fact that Donegall Square was once named Linen Hall Street, after the edifice that once occupied the site of the present City Hall. The books presently in the Linen Hall Library were once kept in the White Linen Hall (demolished in 1898) but were transferred to the present location in 1892. On the present façade, the red hand over the doorway proclaims the building's original use, although, as Fred Heatley points out, it should be the right hand and not the left. The origins of the collection are intimately connected with the establishment of the Belfast Reading Society (1788), which became the Society for Promoting Knowledge in 1792